‘Hidden Cash’ calls it quits

The Bay Area man who had been throwing money around, tweeting clues and causing hordes of people to go looking for dough said he is ending the money drops.

In a message on Twitter, Jason Buzi and fellow Hidden Cash co-founder Yan Budman said they had hoped to continue the scavenger hunts with sponsors and had been approached by “several big names.”

But “after much consideration, we decided that turning HC into an advertising business was not in line with our goals and mission,” the statement read.

“We feel a real sadness at ending this phase. We will miss many aspects of this – the fun of planning the events – but mainly, seeing so many smiling and happy faces, of all ages and backgrounds coming together,” the statement said. “We will miss that. But although part of us really wanted to continue, to return to cities that showed us love, and come to more places around the world, we realized that HC could not be sustained forever, without turning it into a sponsored business, and we did not want to do that.”

The final money drop was on the beach in New York City on Aug. 3.

Buzi began hiding cash around San Francisco on May 22.

Six days later, he spread the wealth to San Jose, where one lucky guy found money on a fire hydrant outside SAP Center. Conveniently, the find was broadcast live on KTVU-TV, and it was later learned that the discovery, while spontaneous, didn’t happen by accident. KTVU told Hidden Cash where the crew would be, so he could stash the cash near them.

Buzi started tweeting the secret locations with only a few hundred followers keeping track. As of Wednesday, there were 719,000 followers.

He popped up around the state, gleefully posting on Twitter close-up shots of envelopes with the money and then waiting for the army of money-hungry people to show up. They would tweet photos confirming their discovery.

In June, Buzi told The Chronicle in an e-mail that he wanted to do “something fun” with the money he made on a real estate deal that earned him a half-million-dollar profit. Buzi has experience running scavenger hunts, hiding tomatoes with cash attached to them around Dolores Park in an event to promote his video-sharing site, CashTomato.com. The website is no longer operational.